Wednesday, January 30, 2008

The Oedipus Rex play got me thinking. Are our destiny and fate are set and written in stone? That we can't never ever change it no matter how hard we try? That it will always come back to you, if not today, someday? When Oedipus's parents find out that their son is going to kill his father and sleep with his mother, they took actions, inhumaned actions so that the prophecy won't come true. They figure, getting rid of the son is the only way to get rid of the prophecy. But along the way, the messenger just can't kill the baby; thus Oedipus lives. Then, when Oedipus has grown up and finds out about the prophecy, he too wants to avoid from killing his father (which he thought was his father). So he ran away to a far far away place. Surprise, surprise, by avoiding his fate, he unknowingly fulfilled his fate when he accidentally kills his father and marries his mother. So I guess what Sophocles is trying to say here is that, no matter how far you run away from your fate, it will always come back to bite you in the rear end someday.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

I think Sophocles is the God of Dramatic events. And kind of sick in the way he can think of incest as one of his main ideas in Oedipus Rex. Initially, I thought that the play is going to be a really sick one, because I thought that the king is going to kill his father in order to sleep with his mother. I shouldn't have jumped into conclusions. After reading the play, then I knew what was actually going on. He didn't know it was his father that he was going to kill, nor did he know that it was his own mother that he was going to marry. Now that's a motherload of tragedy. And jabbing his own eyes with pins? Ouch. With an excellent and vicariuos story line like this, can any other plays be more dramatic than this? Kudos to Sophocles for producing the most tragic play ever read or seen by mankind.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Dr Edwin's class last Wednesday really gave me some insights about the world of plays and theater. Like, I always thought that early plays only served as a source of entertainment, due to the lack in advancement of technology. But I never knew that the plays had religious purposes. I didn't understand why men would dressed up as women to play women roles, and now I know why. And how the Greeks are gods of dramatic plays. Then came the Brecht era where the plays had no drama, and not even a climax. Just pure intelligence for audience to figure out. In my opinion, I'd choose dramatic tragedy over plays that makes me think. But being a student of literature, I can't escape the fact that I DO have to use my brain to figure out all the plays that are assigned. Go figure.

I like to watch dramas on TV. So I thought it'd be the same with the dramas we are studying for Teaching of The Language of Drama. I had never been so wrong. It's much more complicated, and you actually HAVE to study it, not just reading the scripts. Heck, even reading the plays are tough. But that doesn't mean I loath it. In fact, when Dr Edwin gave us the play titles that we are going to study for the next semester, I was looking forward to studying them. Most of the plays - Oedipus Rex, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Importance of Being Ernest are plays that I heard all the time throughout my life, but had no idea what are they about, nor had I the initiative to check it out. Now, I have the opportunity to study it and deepen my knowledge in the world of literature. And I have to prepare myself mentally to swallow its complicatedness and alien terms and languages. I had to.